Archaeology and Origins, A scientific view

JtG writes: Again, I must remind you that scientific theories have problems, they always have and always will.

While all scientific theories may have problems, not all things that have problems are scientific theories.Scientific theories are developed to explain and make sense of bodies of evidence. Theories are considered accepted when they are able to perform this function to the satisfaction of the broad body of scientists.Few would consider your analogy a scientific theory, but if that is what you would like to call it then I won't dissent. But the effectiveness of your theory is measured by its degree of acceptance, the criteria for which I described above, and you don't seem to be winning many converts thus far. The reason for this is quite obvious. Your theory not only has no evidence in its favor, the available evidence directly contradicts it.--Percy

[QUOTE][B]The reason for this is quite obvious. Your theory not only has no evidence in its favor, the available evidence directly contradicts it.[/QUOTE][/B]In that it requires the impossible, for a nonliving thing to reproduce. If buildings were living things, then they could evolve.

JtG,A careful reader will note I never asked for predictions, but a testable hypothesis to determine whether buildings reproduce by themselves. Should be simple enough.So you agree then, buildings don't reproduce by themselves? re. Prediction 9.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

Duplicate post.[This message has been edited by mark24, 10-27-2002]

JtGThanks for that JtG.The recent trend towards open plan living appears to be occurring convergently in different taxa. And what about that fascinating architectural innovation - what looks like cheap cables are appearing stectched taught all over the floor plans of separate but recent taxa and being pronounced 'trendy'. What are the environmental forces driving these things?I'm convinced, as unsophisticated as it sounds, that there is a design process going on somewhere. I'm not prepared to go out on a limb and name names yet but I have my hunches.Someone or something is also mysteriously making my bed, and my kids' beds, in the morning too.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 10-27-2002]

Although I'm not so sure about the bed thing, I have to agree with TB here. Buildings show entirely too much specified complexity to have occurred by random processes. In addition, they are beyond doubt composed of irreducibly complex components. No scientist has ever produced an I-beam in the lab from random collections of metals and chemicals. The probability of an I-beam forming spontaneously greatly exceeds the number of atoms in the universe.You are rejecting a priori IAD (intelligent architectural design) because of your materialist bias. Can you prove that it wasn't designed?After all, if you found a brick in the forest, with it's near perfect symmetry, there are no known natural processes that could have formed it. The existence of the brick alone falsifies your architectural evolutionary theory - as only a Designer could possibly have created it. The existence of an object that could only be designed proves the existence of a Designer (or at least a Manufacturer).

^ Quetzal, I fear I am beginning to be swayed in the opposite direction after reading 'The Blind Condo-Maker' last night. I tried not to succumb but the clarity and beauty of the presentation convinced me that these objects are the result of a systematic evolutionary process. It is simply too easy to ascribe these processes to design. When we become aware that every property of a dwelling that seems to have a 'purpose' can also be viewed as a survival advantage we must admit that IAD is imply unnecessary. There need not be any designer, instead, at each stage of evolution the environment opportunistically selects the architecture with the best survival value. I even find it more intellectually satisfying to think of the Sydney Opera house as having arrived via such a blindfolded processes. The Archi-myth that an international contest was won by a Swedish architect and the project went to contract and was actually completed by thousands of construction contractors in front of the eyes of the world has no more validity to it than the absurd claims of the likes of NASA and their so-called moon trips.I am currently reading the 'Egotistical 2 by 4' and will post a review soon.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 10-28-2002]

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Quetzal, I fear I am beginning to be swayed in the opposite direction after reading 'The Blind Condomaker' last night.

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Indeed, & "condom"s clearly aren't designed as a prophelactic contraceptive! Anything which has such a propensity for allowing gametes past the "roadblock" clearly cannot have been designed for that purpose. Well, my mate would agree (father of 2), anyway.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

^ OK . . . the book has a capitization I forgot to transcribe.

Hi TB,The author of "Blind Condo Maker" is unfortunately heavily biased by his atheistic, anti-IAD worldview. I suggest reading "Icons of Architecture" and "Frank Lloyd Wright on Trial" for a more balanced viewpoint. As to your belief that the Sidney Opera House arose through natural processes: even if it DID, it's nothing more than microarchitecture. An opera house is still an opera house, just like the Metropolitan. You'll never see an opera house changing into a gas station, for example. Architectural evolution is falsified because there can never be any variation beyond the basic kinds. For example, the German Modernism school of industrial architecture is attributed to Peter Behrens, who was a key figure in the transition from Jugendstil to Industrial Classicism. He played a central role in the evolution of German Modernism. ALL modern buildings can be shown to have been designed...

o_O EvC has never been this strange... I was wondering if Wordswordman would come charging and bragged that he had converted several hundred 'designists' into die-hard IAD followers bent on preaching that buildings design themselves for their rent's sake...

QuetzalEverytime we find a transition from one architecture into another you simply want to see more links. Can you distinguish, at a mechanistic level, microarchitectural evolution from macroarchetetural evolution? Your arguements about construction material families is as simplistic as that of architetural styles. It is just another Architect-of-the-gaps arguement.And of course we have never seen Opera houses turning into gas stations. For a start that is not the evolutionary order uncovered by archeontologists which you should know if you were a PhDed architect as you claim to be, and secondly there has not been enough time. We empirically know that gas stations have turned into Opera houses due to cladistics (based both on materials and phenotype) and the ruin orderings which are consistent with each other.

Quetzal & TBHaving read your debate I become convinced that all of this talk about bulidings building themselves out of thin air boils down to RENT. If buildings can build themselves then why pay for rent? You might as well wait for some time, then a building will show up next to yaou and you can live in it for free. No need for investment returns & such things. However this claim is absurd because I have been told by my landlord that if I want to skip paying rent by using this argument, he will sent me packing and then I will be homeless in oblivion. Such a despicable fate! Stop this propaganda, for your own rent's sake. The landlord loves you.

AndyaA-evolutionists suggest that the network between tennants and landlords is a symbiotic realtionship with the dwelling itself playing only a spectator role. It is agreed that only one half of the equation is understood (rent goiong to the landlord). The model predicts a benefit to the tennant which remains to be uncovered. As such the ToA is falsifiable unlike the alternative.The design model is quite ludicrous and arbitary. The IAD camp would have us believe that dwellings are individually designed and built by higher intelligences for arbitary, often unspecified or even trivial purposes. Beauty and splendor become absolutes and purposes other than survival become the rule. Does anyone really doubt that the facade on the Chrysler building is functional? Modern architurence has demonstarted the survival characteristics that such features can potentially induce. Such vestiges cannot be denied and betray a common descent of Architecture.Hold on, I just found an abstract on Archiline:A tri-symbiotic relationship caught in the actS.L. James & P.K. SimonsJ. Archt. Evol & Ecol. 45, 1230-1247 (2002)The mechanism of symbiosis betwee tennants and landlords has been under fierce debate in recent years. Whilst the budget is understood in one direction, with rent being exchnged from tennants to landlords the return has never been indentified. Here we show, through experimental studies in downtown Toronto, that dwellings, rather than being spectators, are involved in a tri-symbiotic realtionship with tennants and landlords. Landlords have been unambiguously observed to have repaired apartments on the south side of town which correlate in time with rent back-payments (p < .002). We suggest that the dwellings provide accomodation to tennants becasue tennants pay rent to landlords who repair dwellings.[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 10-30-2002]

IAD ludicrous? If anything your evolutionary architecture is the dogmatic belief system that has gaping holes in it. This is even recognized by famous evoarchitecturalists:"We fancy ourselves as the only true students of architectural history, yet to preserve out favored account of building evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the process we profess to study...The family trees which adorn our textbooks and Better Homes and Gardens are based on inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossil buildings." Stephen J. Goldbloom"But no one has found any such in-between buildings. This was long chalked up to 'gaps' in the fossil records, gaps that proponents of architectural gradualism confidently expected to fill in someday when rock strata of the proper antiquity were eventually located. But ALL OF THE FOSSIL EVIDENCE TO DATE HAS FAILED TO TURN UP ANY SUCH MISSING LINKS. There is a growing conviction among many scientists that these transitional forms never existed. And if this is so, then the gradualistic view of architectural evolution is an inaccurate portrayal of how buildings develops." Famous architect Niles Axelrod.World famous evoarchitect Isabelle Lewontin said that buildings "appear to have been carefully and artfully designed." She views them as "the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer."As you can see, even your own evoarchitects see the evidence supports design rather than evolution!